Knockdown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Finally, they reached the top of Berthoud Pass and the sign declaring that they were at the Continental Divide, elevation 11,307 feet.

  “It’s not quite as bad on the other side,” Barry said. “Fewer switchbacks, and it’s not as steep.”

  “Good. I’d just as soon not go through that again.”

  “Seen any signs of those railroad tracks yet?”

  “No, but from the maps I looked at on the computer, we should be spotting them before too much longer. The line passes through a tunnel under the divide and comes out not far from Granby.”

  “Keep an eye out. The train we’re looking for should be the only one on this line today.”

  Jake nodded. On the map, the railroad tracks were a short distance east of the highway. He watched in that direction, eager for his first sight of them.

  After a while, he pointed and said, “There!” The steel rails, just one set of them, were visible intermittently through the trees. The railroad came close to the highway at times, curved away from it at others, following a route that probably had been laid out when the highway was just a trail, if it was even there at all.

  “Any sign of the train?” Barry asked.

  “No, I don’t see it. And I don’t know any way of finding out where it is along the line. All we can do is get to the station in Granby as fast as we can, hope it hasn’t gone past yet, and figure out a way to stop it.”

  “There’ll be an emergency signal to stop it. We can use that.”

  “We’ll have to get the personnel at the station to cooperate,” Jake said.

  “They’ll cooperate,” Barry said. “With the fate of the whole country at stake, we’ll make sure they cooperate.” He rubbed his chin as he frowned in thought. “If I have to, I’ll blow up the tracks myself to keep the train from starting again, once it’s stopped and not in danger of derailing.”

  “We’re both going to prison. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Be worth it to save the country.”

  “Then who’s going to save it next time?” Jake asked.

  Barry glanced over at him, and for once Jake felt like he had thought of something before his uncle did. Most of the time, Barry seemed to be two or even three steps ahead of everybody around him. That was one of the things about Barry that had always impressed Jake the most.

  “Well, if we can, we’ll slip away, but the most important thing is stopping that train.”

  “Agreed,” Jake said.

  The terrain was just as rugged and scenic on this side of the divide, but the highway’s path wasn’t quite as treacherous. And since they were going downhill, the truck was able to travel a little faster. Not too fast, though, because they couldn’t risk it turning into a runaway. Luckily, the Kenworth had state-of-the-art brakes along with everything else.

  Jake watched the railroad tracks more than he did the scenery. They weren’t far from the town of Granby, where they would find the station, when he spotted what he had been looking for.

  “Up there!” he said as he pointed. “You see it?”

  “I sure do,” Barry replied grimly. “That’s got to be it.”

  The Silver Eagle lived up to its name. All the cars were painted silver, including the sleek, bullet-nosed locomotive. As the train came in and out of their view through the trees, Jake tried to get a count of the cars. The train was a short one, only half a dozen cars behind the engine. Compared to freight trains that sometimes stretched for several miles, the Silver Eagle was nothing.

  And yet it carried the fate of the nation aboard it.

  Barry’s foot pressed down harder on the gas pedal. It was an instinctive response to the urgency of the situation. The truck surged ahead. The train was going pretty fast, but the Kenworth drew even with it and slowly pulled ahead.

  Probably no one on board the train even noticed the big truck on the highway. If they did, they wouldn’t think anything of it.

  “All right, now we need to get to the station,” Barry said. “Navigate for me.”

  Jake returned to the computer and typed for a moment, then said, “It’s on Railroad Avenue. Big surprise there. The road turns to the left off the highway. I’ll tell you where.”

  When they got there, with the town of Granby spreading out on both sides of the highway, Jake didn’t have to say anything because Barry spotted the sign for Railroad Avenue and was already slowing the truck for the turn before Jake could speak up. Jake spotted two old-fashioned, cream-painted frame buildings with dark green roofs up ahead on the left.

  The tracks, which Highway 40 had crossed on an overpass a short distance to the east, ran behind the buildings. Jake and Barry leaned forward to peer back along the steel rails. The Silver Eagle hadn’t come into sight yet.

  Barry brought the truck to a stop in the parking lot, not caring that it blocked numerous spaces. With no regular trains running today, the lot was almost empty. Only two cars were there.

  They checked their pistols—two each, as usual—and climbed down quickly from the Kenworth’s cab. They started toward the entrance of the station itself, which was the second building. The first building appeared to be used for storage and maintenance.

  They were hurrying along the road beside that first building when two men stepped out through the main building’s double entrance doors and opened fire on them with automatic machine pistols.

  CHAPTER 63

  Born and raised in Denver, Tarik Duffar had been pretty much indistinguishable from any other American kid, interested mostly in video games, graphic novels, marijuana, and girls, with occasional forays into sports. He’d gone to college intending to “do something with computers,” like so many others of the past few generations, and had taken little, if any, interest in politics until a friend of his started getting into the whole “Islamic heritage” thing.

  Now Tarik was standing in a train station in a little mountain town holding a gun on the fat, terrified, middle-aged black man who’d been the only one working here today, while his friend Beni harangued the guy and threatened to blow his brains out.

  “Hey, man, take it easy,” Tarik said. “This gentleman’s gonna cooperate. Aren’t you, sir?”

  Tarik had learned the whole “good cop, bad cop” business from movies and TV. He and Beni hadn’t worked that out in advance, but now it seemed to Tarik like a tactic that might work, so there was no reason not to try it.

  “J-Just what is it you boys want?” the station man asked. “There’s no money here, if this is a robbery. I mean, I’ll give you what I got, but it’s not much—”

  “We don’t care about your money,” Beni said, adding some obscenities. “We want you to stop that train!”

  “But . . . but I got my orders,” the man sputtered. “It’s a special train, goin’ through nonstop—”

  “We know that,” Tarik said. “But you have an emergency signal, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sure, but I don’t even remember the last time anybody used it—”

  Tarik interrupted the man again.

  “But you know how to use it, don’t you?”

  “Of course. I just have to use the computer in the office.”

  Tarik aimed his machine pistol right between the man’s eyes and said, “Then go do it, and nobody has to get hurt here.”

  That sounded like something they’d say on TV or in a movie, too.

  The leaders of their cell in Denver had gone over and over the plan. Tarik knew that his and Beni’s part in it was redundant. Some of their members had gotten jobs on the train as part of the support staff, and one of them was tasked with stopping the train here in Granby so someone important could get off. Tarik didn’t know exactly who that VIP was, but he suspected it was Bandar al-Saddiq, who had come to this country to lead them in their holy mission.

  The man whose job it was to stop the train would remain on it, running the engine, until the very end, as would the others. They would die as martyrs to their glorious cause. Tarik was jealous of them. But his d
ay was coming, he was sure of that. Soon, he would be in paradise himself, surrounded by all those virgins eager to welcome him . . .

  The station man’s face was covered with beads of sweat from the fear that gripped him. He said, “You boys goin’ to all this trouble just to stop a train? You figure on robbing it, like old-time outlaws? You gonna be in bad trouble if you try to do that. Lots of important folks on that train, I hear. They’ll all have bodyguards with them. You’re just gonna get yourself killed. If you just leave now, I promise I won’t call the cops—”

  “Turn on the emergency signal!” Beni screamed in the man’s face. He lashed out with the gun, hitting the man on the head, driving him to his knees. Blood began to drip from the cut the blow opened up. “Do it!”

  Sobbing in pain and fear, the station man struggled back to his feet and stumbled toward the office.

  “Wait!” Tarik said as he glanced through the window at the end of the building and caught a glimpse of a big truck turning into the station’s parking lot.

  Like everyone else in the group, he had heard the stories about all the trouble that had been caused by two Americans in a big truck. He had seen the photos of them that had circulated among all the Lashkar-e-Islami cells in the country. Surely those men hadn’t shown up here, just at the wrong time—but he and Beni couldn’t afford to take that chance.

  “What’s wrong?” Beni demanded irritably.

  The words tumbled out of Tarik’s mouth as he explained about the truck and the two men. Beni’s lips curled in a sneer.

  “If it’s them, we’ll kill them, that’s all,” he said. “They won’t stand in the way of Allah’s glorious plan.”

  Tarik opened one of the doors just a little and peeked out. His voice trembled with a mixture of excitement and fear as he said, “Two men are getting out of the truck . . . They’re coming this way . . . I . . . I think it’s them—”

  The station man turned and tried to run. Beni chopped down at the back of his head with the gun. It connected with a solid thud, and the station man sprawled on his face, moaning.

  “Let’s kill them!” Beni said.

  “But I’m not sure they’re the same ones—”

  “I don’t care! They’re infidels!”

  Beni slammed the doors all the way open and charged out. Suddenly, Tarik was scared. His belly felt like it was filled to bursting with ice water. But he followed his friend anyway, an involuntary yell coming from his mouth as he thrust the gun in his hands toward the Americans and pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  Jake and Barry reacted to the attack instantly and instinctively, leaping away from each other and drawing their guns with blinding speed. The two attackers, both of them young, didn’t seem to be very familiar with their weapons. They sprayed lead around wildly, filling the air between Jake and Barry but not coming too close to either.

  Jake crouched, firing the Browning with a two-handed grip. His shot drilled through the shoulder of one of the young men, shredding flesh and shattering bone. The man screamed in pain and dropped his gun. He twisted halfway around and clapped his other hand to the wounded shoulder.

  The 1911 in Barry’s hand boomed. The .45 Automatic Colt Pistol round slammed into the other gunner’s chest and lifted him off his feet as it threw him backward. His arms flew out to the side, and his machine pistol sailed through the air as he lost his grip on it. It landed in the middle of Railroad Avenue. The young man who’d been firing it landed on his back on the sidewalk in front of the station and slid a few feet before coming to a stop. He didn’t move again.

  The other attacker had fallen to his knees and stayed there, clutching his bloody shoulder and sobbing. Jake approached him carefully, with the Browning ready to fire again.

  “Get down on your belly!” Jake ordered him. “Now!”

  “Please don’t kill me, bro,” the young man whimpered in a thoroughly American accent. “Please don’t shoot me again.”

  “Then do what I tell you and get down.”

  The man tried to follow orders but stopped and groaned as the movement made him hurt even more. Barry circled behind him, put a foot between his shoulder blades, and shoved, not giving him any choice in the matter. The guy sprawled on the sidewalk, howling now.

  He shut up as Jake knelt in front of him and said, “We won’t hurt you anymore if you cooperate. What’s your name?”

  Through the blubbering, the young man said, “T-Tarik.”

  “Tarik, you’re not going to die from that wound, but you will die if you don’t tell me the truth. You understand?”

  Tarik lifted his tear-stained face to look at Jake and nodded.

  “What were you supposed to do here?” Jake asked.

  “B-Beni and me . . . we were supposed to . . . stop the train.”

  “You’re Lashkar-e-Islami?”

  “G-Glory to the Prophet! All glory to Allah!”

  “I don’t want slogans,” Jake snapped. “How were you going to stop the train? Is there a bomb in the station?”

  “N-No . . .”

  A new voice said, “There’s no bomb, mister.”

  Jake and Barry looked up to see a heavyset, middle-aged black man stumbling toward them, holding a hand to his head as if he’d been clouted there. He went on, “Those two came in and started wavin’ those ugly guns around and ordered me to turn on the emergency signal so the train that’s comin’ would stop. They yelled and threatened me a lot, especially that one”—he nodded toward the man Barry had shot, who was staring sightlessly up at the Colorado sky—“but that’s all they’d had time to do before they spotted you two fellas.”

  Jake looked back down at the wounded man and asked, “Why did you try to kill us? Why start shooting?”

  “We . . . we saw pictures . . . they sent us pictures . . . said you were trying to interfere with . . . the plan . . .”

  “Why were you supposed to stop the train?” Barry asked. “Is somebody supposed to get off here?”

  “Y-Yeah. I . . . I don’t know . . . who . . .”

  Jake glanced at his uncle and said, “Sherman.”

  “Yeah, and maybe Saddiq. So what we need to do is let the train go ahead and stop. That’s what we wanted to start with.”

  The station man said, “Who are you guys? Do you work for the government?”

  “That’s right, sir,” Jake said as he straightened. “I’m with the FBI. I don’t have my credentials on me right now, but I assure you, we’re trying to stop another terrorist attack on the railroad.”

  The man groaned and said, “Heaven help us, I thought it might be something like that when these two showed up. What can I do to help?”

  “How badly are you hurt?”

  The man gestured toward his head with a hand that had blood smeared on it and said, “This knock on the head? This is nothin’. I’ve got a nice thick skull.”

  “Let’s get these two inside, out of sight,” Barry said. “From where he’ll be in the locomotive’s cab, the engineer probably wouldn’t be able to see them, but we don’t want to risk spooking him and making him go on without stopping.”

  “You want to stop the train, like they did?” the station man asked in confusion.

  “Yes, but for completely different reasons,” Jake said.

  “Okay. Should I call the police?”

  “Not yet,” Barry said. “We have jurisdiction over this matter.”

  “All right. You need a hand?”

  “No, we can get them,” Barry replied as he bent down, grasped the dead man’s collar, and started to drag the corpse into the station.

  CHAPTER 64

  Ahmed Noorzai felt greatly honored. Pride filled him as he checked the gun in the concealed holster at his waist, under the waiter’s jacket. With his experience at one of the best restaurants in Denver, he’d had no trouble getting the job on the Silver Eagle, especially when one of the regular waitstaff from the dining car had come down with a sudden illness and had to be replaced.

&nbs
p; That “illness” was a slit throat, but no one knew it yet. The body had been carefully disposed of. It might never be found.

  Noorzai had performed his job well during the short journey so far, but his real task was yet to come. He was about to set out on it now, as he opened the door of the car’s vestibule, hung on, and reached carefully around into the gap between cars until he was able to grasp one of the rungs of the narrow ladder leading to the top.

  Noorzai pulled himself around and climbed the ladder. He didn’t like leaving the door open behind him like that, but there was no way to close it from where he was. He wondered if he would be missed before the train reached its ultimate destination: the deep gorge running alongside the tracks where the Colorado River leaped and danced over its rocky bed.

  The train was about halfway between the western end of the Moffat Tunnel and the station at Granby, where it would be stopping to let Noorzai’s leader, Bandar al-Saddiq, get off, along with the infidel Sherman. The unscheduled stop would be passed off as necessary to take care of an unexpected mechanical problem, and then the train would roll on with a delay of only minutes.

  Noorzai would be at the controls, driving the locomotive on to its date with destiny. He was eager to meet his own destiny, as well, to die and awaken in paradise.

  But not too soon. He had to stay alive until he had finished his job, so he was extremely careful as he crawled along the top of the car. The Silver Eagle might be a luxury train, but it still swayed and jolted from time to time as it traveled along the steel rails. Noorzai didn’t want to slip and fall off.

  He only had to make his way over one car before he was able to climb down the ladder at the front and step over to the catwalk that ran along the locomotive’s side to the door into the cab. He was careful during that brief journey as well, clinging to the handholds as the wind of the train’s passage buffeted him.

  Four other members of Lashkar-e-Islami were aboard the train, also posing as employees of the Silver Eagle excursion line. They would step in only if there was trouble, and that wouldn’t happen unless the infidels somehow realized that they were on their way to their deaths.